I Love this!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ESNzM/www.ted.com/talks/courtney_martin_reinventing_feminism.html

Pilgrimage

This weekend we take a pilgrimage.  My husband, Jane, and I head up to Seneca Falls to visit the site of the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s homes and a few other sites.  I am very excited and we have some books out of the library to brush Jane up on terms like abolitionism, suffrage, property rights, Quakers etc.  (I have to say that I was a proud mother when she recognized a picture of Angelina Grimke in a library book.)

I was raised as an educational/historical vacationer and it is always intriguing to walk in the lives and homes of our predecessors.  It seems to fill you with the spirits of the people who were there when you can walk in a space that was theirs.  As much as I have enjoyed various battle fields and historical citys/villages/farms, I am really looking forward to experiencing a cause so personal and people whose lives I know so well.

Great Article About the Gendering of Kid's Clothing

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html?c=y&page=1

Mothering

Parenting is a really difficult thing for any parent.  That said, I think there are a few reasons that mothering is especially difficult.

There is so much extra expectation and judgment placed on mothers.  I was thinking about this first when someone mentioned to me that when people see a single mom they often assume she is stuck in that situation unwillingly but if they see a single dad he is viewed as making a positive choice.

I often hear all or most moms I encounter dismayed at how they aren’t living up to another mom they know, or some imaginary ideal they have.  Why is it that we expect so much, or so much more, out of mothers?  I have no answer for this, but I do want to reassure myself and all my fellow moms – if your kids are alive and well, if you are doing the best you can…then you are a great mom.

Moms – it’s ok if your kid watched an extra television program today, if they only at one vegetable at dinner, if you didn’t have the exact right answer to their question, if you ran out of patience, if you didn’t make organic baby food or if you used disposable diapers.  Trust me - your kid is doing great.

Genetics and Parenthood

I've come to realize that it will be a couple weeks yet until I can start original blog posts again, so in the meantime I thought I would post the only thing I have been writing --papers.  These in general relate to the blog-topic, so they'll have to do for now.

Genetics and Parenthood

 

            Many consider testing for genetic conditions to be the right and humane thing for medical professionals and parents to do in the consideration of procreation.  The possibility and avoidance of serious physical pain and degenerative illness should be a serious consideration for parents; however, the testing and prevention of many genetic disorders that do not cause physical suffering is unethical and their harm is primarily a societal construction.

            The question of determining genetics in parenthood comes from the noble desire to alleviate suffering.  Medical professionals, future parents and others likely have a future child’s best interests in mind when attempting to provide them with the healthiest life possible.  Since, according to McDougal, one of the primary virtues of parenthood is giving your child the best ability to flourish in life and to support their future-agency (McDougal 184-186) one can assume that this includes a duty to provide them with the best possible health.

            Although it is easy to say that parents should provide children with the best possible health there are other facets to consider when discussing genetic testing.  For example, parents may have a duty to provide future children with best possible health but to what extent?  If a parent has a known family history of a genetic disorder then they bear more responsibility in protecting a future child from it than a parent who does not know of any potential problems.  Expecting parents to avoid known harm is reasonable while expecting parents to test for any unknown problems is unreasonable as it would place undue financial and physical burdens on them in many ways.

Another, perhaps more important, issue to consider is what constitutes a condition worthy of protecting a child from.  While many conditions involve serious physical pain and degenerative disorders, others primarily involve differences in existence from what society has deemed ideal.  Throughout life all children will likely experience some limiting conditions and some physical pain which society has deemed acceptable.  For example, shorter or less athletic children are likely to feel somewhat limited in their life because our society values tallness and athleticism, but that is a limitation that parents have accepted as reasonable.  However, genetic conditions which are likely to have a child experiencing physical pain on a daily basis (which for the purposes of the essay will be known as ‘unreasonable pain’) may be worth avoiding by preventing the life or conception of that child. This is because, while all humans experience some limitation and pain throughout their lives it is not necessarily ethical to allow someone to live a completely diminished existence by the experience of daily pain when, with a parents known testing results of their own genetics, the conception of the child could have been prevented.

            One problem with testing for genetic problems is that it often lacks the consideration and definition of unreasonable pain.  Many conditions that do not cause unreasonable pain are tested for and prevented because of their supposed harm to the child’s future.  An example of this supposed harm for the future is argued by McDougal when she presents the situation of two women who sought to have a child who would potentially be deaf.  McDougal argues that this is not the choice of a virtuous parent who would seek for their child’s best health and future-agency (McDougal 187-190).  However, this future child would not experience unreasonable pain in their life and would merely live differently than society felt was ideal.  Many other conditions such as Autism, blindness, deafness, Downs Syndrome etc. are considered to be reasons worthy of preventing children, but if our society did not consider those traits to be more problematic than acceptable limitations there would be no reason that those affected could not live, as everyone else, with some limitations.  “The definitions of terms such as ‘health,’ ‘normality,’ and ‘disability’ are not clear, objective and universal across time and place” (Asch 1650), rather they are constraints that have been constructed by society.

            What is at work is in many ways more a fear of the different than a desire for best health.  Society has many genetic configurations which it accepts and adjusts for that may be seen by some as disadvantages.  In addition to the previously mentioned shortness and lack of athleticism one could also consider vision impairment, baldness, fatness, and even race or gender to be conditions society believes less than ideal at times.

If public health frowns on efforts to select for or against girls or boys and would oppose future efforts to select for or against those who would have a particular sexual orientation, but promotes people’s efforts to avoid having children who would have disabilities, it is because medicine and public health view disability as extremely different from and worse than these other forms of human variation. (Asch 1650)

Thus, the primary question should not be framed around what society thinks is less than ideal health but around the issue of unreasonable pain.  Just as it would be ridiculous for medical professionals to tell an African American woman not to procreate because her future child would likely face more serious disadvantages than a Caucasian child (Asch 1655), it is also unreasonable for society to attempt to weed out those that experience limitations beyond what some medical professionals think is right. 

While it is in many ways a wise consideration for parents and medical professionals to be concerned about bringing into existence a child who would live life experiencing unreasonable pain, it is not a reason to prevent all genetic conditions.  Instead of preventing the birth of humans with different limitations than the average person, society should work to adapt around those limitations as they have with so many others.

Honesty

I am a big believer in being as open and honest as possible with kids.  I was recently watching the television show, ‘Parenthood’ and one set of parents was explaining death to their daughter.  The show implied that they did not believe in Heaven and had agreed not to tell their daughter about it, but in the clutch the mom caved in and used it as a way to make her daughter feel better about death.

Why are parents willing to do this?  Are you really willing to lie to your children just to temporarily make them feel better?  And why box yourself in to something you don’t even believe in?  Where is the shame in telling your kids that you don’t know, or that some people believe in that but you don’t.  It seems like less damage in the long run.

Compassion and Emotional Responsibilities

We often tell girls to be very compassionate towards others, continually asking them to constantly take others feelings into account, put others wants and needs before themselves and sacrifice themselves for others.  While I think these are good and important traits to have, and we should be instilling them in boys as well, I can’t help but wonder about the effect this has on the way women carry emotional responsibility later in life.  Women so often take on everyone’s problems on their shoulders, feeling the need to always care for everyone else first.  Are these correlated, should we be concerned to see this in our children?  Perhaps they can balance being caring, but not responsible for other’s emotions or problems?